


On Fringilla as A Black Female Antagonist

by young neem leaves (3ImpossiblyEclecticDuck6)



Series: The Witcher — Meta [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24247999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3ImpossiblyEclecticDuck6/pseuds/young%20neem%20leaves
Summary: Understanding Fringilla's status as an antagonist, in relation to Tissaia and Yennefer
Relationships: Fringilla Vigo/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Tissaia de Vries & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: The Witcher — Meta [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1750285
Kudos: 12





	On Fringilla as A Black Female Antagonist

**Author's Note:**

> In response to this post on Tumblr: https://cantfightfatetoo.tumblr.com/post/190801216057. I'm copy-pasting what I'd written on Tumblr, so please check the original post before or afterwards, for more context.

I agree that Yennefer openly sidelining Fringilla and ‘conquering’ Aedirn, in a way, when Aedirn might have been Fringilla’s, was a formative experience for Fringilla. But I don’t think Fringilla resents Yennefer. Her tone when she reminds the Brotherhood that Yennefer is responsible for Fringilla going to Nilfgaard sounds rather flat and neutral to me. She’s pointing out the causal chain: it just so happens that it’s a complicated chain with duplicitous implications. Yennefer _is_ responsible; but if she hadn’t taken Aedirn, Fringilla wouldn’t have been able to reach the heights in Nilfgaard as she has, and that’s not a good thing for her. Fringilla is both sardonic and grateful. She possibly views Yennefer with a mixture of pity and irony - Yennefer’s exceptional power and beauty is an accepted fact among her fellow mages. Yennefer’s career is an entire study in the irony of fate and the ruination brought by irrational greed - to the Brotherhood. While Fringilla had departed from the Brotherhood early on, I think she still shared that view. You’re right that Yennefer and Fringilla are similar in that they crave power and legacy of their own. But I think when Fringilla offered Yennefer a place in Nilfgaard, this was what she meant. A chance for them both to be powerful, without overshadowing each other; a place where they can both have what they want, without anyone having to sacrifice something for another’s sake. A place where power wins, always - and Yennefer and Fringilla’s power was never in doubt.

Something that’s not as often mentioned was the intense kinship Yennefer felt with some of her peers - the more unstable and vulnerable the girl, the deeper the bond. And Fringilla was a vulnerable girl - her self-consciousness on having frozen the cat, as you pointed out, OP, her very obvious _youth_ , her excitement on learning magic - which turns drastically into horror when her hand is injured. This is something else that gets overlooked a bit with Fringilla: the way she got injured was unnecessary. Tissaia could’ve hinted about the requirements of magic, but she didn’t. She waited for Fringilla to hurt herself, using her as a test subject and an example. It was part of Tissaia’s perfectionist, authoritarian ethos, of course. But it was cruel, nevertheless, and Fringilla would’ve felt targeted against, bullied and shamed. (Subtextually, of course, Fringilla is a young black girl being abused by an older white woman.) She is used as an example for what you can and cannot do with magic; how to and not to try to control chaos. She is used to exercise discipline at it’s earliest stages: do as you’re told, or lose your humanity and die miserably. What does Fringilla do on becoming the mage of new Nilfgaard?

> F: Forbidden magic is one of the ghost stories taught here. There’s no such thing as light or dark magic. Nothing in this world is as simple as that.

Tissaia had allowed Fringilla to be hurt under the guise of ‘light magic’. She’d gotten away with it because it’s her school, she makes the rules and enforces them. Fringilla in Nilfgaard simply removed the distinction between what is allowed and what isn’t. She changed the rules by rewriting most of them. But did she do this to help others? Hell no! The first thing she does in the Battle of Sodden is send ahead subordinate mages to deploy the dangerous magic forbidden by the Brotherhood. Those subordinates pay the price for that limitless, uncontrolled chaos, but not Fringilla. She does this for the sake of her own power, her own beliefs, and she knows she won’t be stopped because deep down, everyone wants what she’s gunning for: power, with no consequences. The Brotherhood can’t fight back because, well, that doesn’t make them enemies, just two factions with ‘differences’.

Fringilla won’t be used as an example anymore, like she was once and Yennefer is at present. She doesn’t have to prove herself, she doesn’t need to prove anything. She’s made sure she doesn’t have to. This isn’t Aretuza anymore; she’s hell bent on stamping out that past, erasing every single institution that had systematically wronged her just as it had wronged Yennefer. Fringilla recognised that as well as Yennefer did; the two of them just have different responses to being let down by and recognising the terrible rot in the foundations of The System. And this is what it comes back to: Fringilla does remember that she and Yennefer are peers. They were both taught by Tissaia in Aretuza, they grew up together. Fringilla did know that Yennefer was planning something desperate when she was refused Aedirn. Yennefer knows, from the evidence at Sodden, that Fringilla has only begun her moves. That kinship and understanding of each other will always mean something to both of them.

Because the nodal point of both their traumas, the matriarch championing the old order, is still very much in power: Tissaia. Both Yennefer and Fringilla harbour intense, ambivalent feelings regarding their former teacher and current senior. Yennefer keeps trying, but just as Tissaia fails to, Yennefer also cannot escape her bond with Tissaia. They used to be too close for them to lose each other entirely. Fringilla rejects Tissaia’s teachings in an even more radical way than Yennefer.

> F: I don’t need your help anymore… _Rectoress_.

The whole point of the last two episodes - particularly 1.07, _Before A Fall_ \- is pride and it’s consequences. Tissaia, like Calanthe, suffers the fallout of her own conservatism and hubris. Yennefer and Fringilla have to navigate a whole lot of shit to find their own pride. In fact, Yennefer is more successful in this than Fringilla - she gets a chance at emotional resolution, confronting her old trauma and working with it instead of repressing it. Fringilla is so busy rejecting that past that she misses that chance. She offered Yennefer limitless freedom in Nilfgaard, but Yennefer finds it on her own, true to her anarchist beliefs, outside of The System 2.0 that Fringilla devised for herself. I don’t want a redemption arc for Fringilla, she doesn’t need one. She only has to recognise that her downfall happened in a flawed response to her past trauma, and that she failed because projects to erase history without understanding its deeper connotations are very likely to fail. I want pride to remain the keynote for Tissaia, Yennefer, and Fringilla.


End file.
